Schroedinger's Anniversary
by Bluemoonalto
Summary: On the tenth anniversary of the day the Nasty Burger didn't explode, Danny tries to drag himself out of a black mood.
1. Anniversary

Schroedinger's Anniversary

by Bluemoonalto

This story has been lurking in the back of my mind for about four months, ever since I finished my first _Danny Phantom_ fic, "A Thermos for Valerie." For most of that time it has simmered on the back burner, waiting for that final kick of creativity that would bring it to completion.

That kick of creativity is happening right now. The story is not finished, but it is close—and I believe I will be able to post its six chapters at fairly regular intervals between now and the end of the year.

WARNING: Nothing happens in this fic! It is 100 plot-free. Also, the story features the Danny/Sam pairing, but (like all of my stories) it is not a romance.

ooooo0ooooo

It was the handcuffs that gave it away. Until I saw the handcuffs, I didn't have a clue.

I mean, Sam and I hadn't eaten at the Nasty Burger since we graduated from high school. She hates the place, and as my tastes matured I gradually figured out why: the food was cheap, heavily salted and loaded with grease. It's primarily a teen hangout (probably because the food was cheap, heavily salted and loaded with grease) and the students from Casper High are looking younger and younger every year—a fact that is starting to bother me as much as the fact that the kid behind the counter just called me "sir."

So, what the heck were we doing here on a Friday night? I'd offered to cook whatever Sam wanted for dinner, but she wasn't interested in my feeble efforts in the kitchen. "Let's go out to eat," she said, and I figured she meant Tara Thai, or Addis Ababa, or the Cantina Café. One of our usual places. She's been craving the oddest kinds of foods lately, so we eat out quite a lot. But no: tonight it had to be the Nasty Burger.

Jazz and Tucker both met us there. That's when I knew something was up, because the four of us haven't been together in one room since. . . last Christmas, I guess. Jazz is serving her psychiatric residency on one coast and Tucker is working on his Master's degree in computer engineering on the other coast, and between holiday gatherings we mostly stay in touch by video mail. But here we were, on a Friday evening in the middle of April, squeezed into in our old booth at the Nasty Burger, the table loaded down with plastic trays of cheap food, heavily salted and loaded with grease. A Team Phantom Reunion.

And I didn't get it.

We spent most of an hour just catching up. Sam had endless stories to tell about the joys of morning sickness, mood swings and bloat, and Jazz produced a stethoscope from her bag and listened gravely to the baby's heartbeat, which she pronounced to be strong and steady. Tucker regaled us with tales of his latest programming triumph, none of which made a whit of sense to me—but he seemed immensely proud, and I was glad for him. He also passed around a hologram of his latest girlfriend, a winsome blonde doctoral candidate in library sciences. I listened with pleasure to their stories and savored the rare moment of camaraderie. I didn't have much to say about my life, at least, not much that I could talk about in public with so many strangers around, but I was mildly buzzed on junk food and caffeine, warm and comfortable and happy. And puzzled.

As Tucker mopped up the last of the Nasty Sauce with a cold french fry, Sam lifted her cup of cherry cola in a solemn toast, and we all raised our own drinks in ritual response. "Well, here's to the tenth anniversary," she said.

"We're still here!" Jazz answered; at the same time Tuck added, "You can't keep the good guys down!"

Anniversary? Oh, no! How could I forg—wait a minute. Our anniversary is in October. Uh. . . I proposed to her in June. The anniversary of our first real date was in January, first kiss (not the fake-out kind) in February, started going steady in March. What the. . . ?

"Are you okay?" Jazz must have been watching me like a hawk. She's always done that, ever since I was nine and she made me lie down on the living room sofa and tell her all about my fear of multiplication tables. Sam and I manage to misunderstand each other's non-verbal cues all the time, but Dr. Jasmine Fenton never misses a twitch.

"Come on, Danny," Tucker interjected around a mouthful of pie. "This should be a happy occasion, don't you dare get all maudlin about it."

"Sam, did you tell him what tonight was all about? Because. . . I don't think he gets it." Jazz continued to gaze at me, clinically, as though I were one of her research subjects. (Which, for all I know, I may be.)

Desperate, I turned to Sam. She was sitting beside me, her face showing deep concern. "I just assumed he'd remember. . . . Danny—don't you tell me you've forgotten what happened here, ten years ago today?"

"Oh, he remembers!" Jazz exclaimed. "He just didn't realize that it's been exactly ten years."

Okay, there's a clue: Ten years ago, today. Um. . . I was fourteen. That was the year of the accident, but the accident was way back in August. By April we were about three-quarters finished with the 9th grade. That year was full of so many firsts, how could I remember which one. . . .

"_Great Expectations!_"

I was so wrapped up in searching my memories, I almost thought the voice was in my imagination. But it really was Mr. Lancer, a little bit paunchier and just a little bit stooped, approaching our booth and clearly astonished to see us here. For no good reason at all, I immediately broke out into a nervous sweat.

"Miss Manson, Miss Fenton, Mr. Foley. . . Mr. Fenton," he acknowledged each of us in turn. Was there a little hesitation, a bit of frost in his voice when he came to my name? I'd been a thorn in his side from the first day of high school until the day he put the diploma in my hand.

Sam raised her left hand slightly to show her rings and corrected him with a smile: "_Mrs._ Fenton." At the exact same moment, Tucker jerked a thumb at Jazz and said, "_Doctor_ Fenton."

"Ah, of course. My mistake. Congratulations, Jasmine, Daniel, Samantha." His attention was suddenly diverted by a commotion on the other side of the restaurant. A noisy herd of young teens had just thundered in, laughing and jostling each other over some private joke. "Excuse me, will you?" he said quickly, then without waiting for an answer he was off. "Mr. Lewis! Ms. Howard! Mr. Owolabi! I'm rather surprised to find you here tonight. Do you plan to spend the rest of your lives flipping burgers?"

And that's when I saw the plain, brown briefcase handcuffed to his left wrist.

The weird thing is, I have a bit of a blank spot in my memory about what happened next. I'm pretty sure I disappeared, but I'm not sure if I excused myself and made a run for the bathroom first or just phased straight down into the floor.

oooo0oooo

End Chapter One


	2. Mr Lancer

Chapter 2

A quarter of an hour later I found myself sitting quietly on the front steps of Casper High, a block away from the Nasty Burger and a long leap backwards into my youth. Exactly ten years earlier my friends and classmates had been inside the school, sweating over that three-hour test, while I sat here on the steps in the warm April sun, stunned, humbled, hopeful; breathing the sweet, clean air of my own second chance. I had to come to terms with the fact that I had already failed the most important test, failed miserably and at immeasurable cost, and that the make-up test was only just beginning.

Ten long years have come and gone. How could I have lost track? Of course the date was auspicious! Of course the three people who knew me best, the only other humans on earth who had any idea what catastrophe had been averted, would want to commemorate the occasion. They all very nearly died that day.

As for me. . . well, from my fourteen-year-old perspective, "ten years" was nothing but a vague synonym for "practically forever"—more than two-thirds of my whole life. Was the test finally over? Has my failure finally been erased from the record?

_Does he still exist?_

"Ah. So there you are, Danny." Lancer's nasal voice jerked me back to the present. He was striding up the walk toward me, briefcase in hand. "Are you all right? You left rather suddenly back there, everyone was wondering where you'd gone to."

I lowered my eyes, embarrassed that he had noticed my spontaneous escape. "Please don't tell me they're sending out search parties."

He smiled. "No, Samantha assured me that you had your reasons for leaving and that you can take care of yourself. I'm just on my way home; my apartment's around the corner. But I'm glad to see you're okay."

I nodded, hoping he would go away and leave me alone with my brooding thoughts, but I had no such luck. He walked right up and lowered himself stiffly to sit beside me, setting the briefcase on the step between us. For a brief moment, I have no idea why, I imagined myself slipping my hand through the side of the briefcase and snatching the answer packet from inside. I squeezed my wayward hands into fists until the image subsided.

In the litany of deaths that came about because of my disastrous choice, his was the one I sometimes forgot to remember. Even his monument had been separate from the one for my family and my friends. Alone. Forgotten.

And there we sat. It was weird; I had never thought of him having an apartment, sitting down to a lonely meal, turning on the TV. Uh, probably no TV. Sitting down with a book. An old book. A musty old novel with tiny print and no pictures.

"Why _did_ you run off so suddenly, Danny?" He seemed genuinely concerned. "Is there something you'd like to talk about?"

Could this have been more awkward? He was the last person I'd want to be confiding in tonight. But his friendly demeanor, his casual invitation to unburden myself was throwing me off-guard. I tried to change the subject. "You know, Mr. Lancer, I don't remember you ever calling me 'Danny' before."

"You're not a student any more. And my name is William."

He held out his hand as though he were introducing himself to a stranger—not an easy thing to do, with the briefcase still handcuffed to his wrist. I paused awkwardly, not exactly sure how to react, then shook it. "Uh. . . thanks. But I'm not sure I'm quite ready for that, Mr. Lancer."

"No, I don't suppose anyone ever is."

"I never understood why you did that—why you called us by our last names."

There was a hint of a smile on his face, as though he appreciated being asked. For a moment he closed his eyes, as though composing his answer. "A hundred years ago, most children ended their formal education at the eighth grade. Fourteen-year-olds went to work full time in factories or on farms. During the Civil War, fourteen-year-olds enlisted."

"So. . . you were treating us like adults?"

"In a way. High school is _different_, Danny. When you're fourteen, you have to start taking responsibility for your future. You have to make decisions for yourself: what courses to take, how to budget your time, how to set priorities." He gave me a stern, knowing look, and suddenly I realized that he knew exactly why I had run away from the restaurant tonight. Or, at least, he _thought_ he knew. "You have to decide what kind of person you're going to be."

What could I say? At fourteen years old, I saved the world.

"You know, Danny, in my thirty-seven years of teaching I've suspected a lot of students of cheating. I've caught quite a few red-handed. Only a handful have ever come clean on their own. But nobody, _nobody_ has ever looked as happy, as relieved to confess as you did that day."

_Relieved_? He had no idea. I'd lost everything, failed everyone, destroyed my whole world and then miraculously got it all back. "I don't. . . I don't think I've ever thanked you properly for letting me take the makeup test."

"Or for giving you a week of detention to prepare for it?" He raised an eyebrow and nearly smiled. "I have no idea why I went so easy on you. I shouldn't have been so lenient. But you needed the extra time to prepare, and at least I could make sure you made good use of the time."

"You _wanted_ me to do well on the test?"

That earned me an amused, indulgent stare, as though I had announced that Shakespeare was a halfway decent writer. "You're just now figuring this out?"

He had me there. Whatever else I could say about Mr. Lancer, about his cynicism, his sarcasm, his blatant favoritism, I have to admit that he had gone the extra mile for me more times than I could count. He couldn't have known why I struggled so much, why I never seemed able to live up to my potential, but he wouldn't give up on me. Clockwork wasn't the only one who believed in second chances.

"So what are you and Samantha doing these days? I lost track of you two after you graduated."

"Huh?" For some reason, I didn't really expect him to care. And it was still weird hearing him call us by our first names. "Sam works for the city environmental office, and I'm a private investigator."

"A private eye? That's. . . unexpected. Somehow I find it hard to picture you doing something quite so dangerous."

"It's not really what you think. Not exciting or glamorous, like in the movies. I spend most of my time staring at old microfilm records in the library or the courthouse. Or lurking in the shadows watching people do things they'd rather not be seen doing." A job perfectly suited to my unique skills. As for "dangerous"—well, that's the stuff I do for free. "PI work is very flexible; I can set my own hours, work at my own pace." Belatedly, I reached into my shirt pocket and handed him a business card.

"Working at your own pace on your own schedule—that certainly suits you. You were always a law unto yourself. 'Fenton Investigations,'" he read from the card. "'A division of FentonWorks, Inc.'?"

I smiled. "Say what you will about the family business, there's nobody in Amity Park who doesn't know the name FentonWorks. Mind you, I don't exactly go looking for supernatural cases, but when they do come my way. . . well, I have access to the resources and the tools for the job. Mostly I handle domestic disputes, petty fraud, insurance scams, the occasional missing persons case. Keep the card—if you ever need a PI, I'll give you a discount."

"Your office is in your parents' house?"

"Uh, yeah. Except. . . well, it's my house, now. A few months ago my parents bought a condo a few blocks away, over on Ninth. They still come to work in the lab most days, but they deeded the house over to Sam and me. It'll be a good place to raise our daughter." Mom and Dad were understandably reluctant to move out, and Sam was justifiably concerned about raising a baby in a house with a ghost portal in the basement, but everyone agreed that I needed to live there in order to guard the portal.

"Daughter? Sam said it was a boy."

"Oh." I blushed. "That's just a little game we play. Sam asked the doctor not to tell us the baby's gender; she likes living with the mystery. I woke up this morning and she told me that my son had been kicking since three AM; so today I talk about my daughter. In a few days she'll say 'our little girl' and I'll switch to 'our little boy.'"

"And paint the nursery yellow?"

"Purple."

"Ah. But just between us—do _you_ have a preference?"

"Whether she's a boy or a girl? No, I'll be thrilled as long as she's a healthy human being." Like most people, Lancer didn't comment on my odd choice of words. Only a handful of people knew what an agonizing decision it had been for us to start a family, not knowing whether my powers would be passed along to our children.

We fell silent. My thoughts were on my daughter, my son, my child who might someday have to make the kinds of life and death choices that had faced me ten years ago. How many second chances would she need? Or might she be fully human, unburdened by the responsibility of power, free to live up to that academic potential that had eluded me?

As I was lost in my thoughts, he clapped me on the shoulder. "I'm sure she'll be fine. And I look forward to introducing _him_ to literature when _he's_ fourteen." He got to his feet, stretching a bit to work the kinks out of his back. I sat there on the steps and watched him walk away, shoulders stooped, down the sidewalk towards his home.

ooooo0ooooo

Many thanks to Obi-Quiet for agreeing to beta-read. You're the greatest!


	3. Officer Gray

Chapter Three

Under other circumstances, if I wanted to burn off a load of energy or drag myself out of a bad mood, I'd have gone ghost and looked for some other ghost's butt to kick. But on this auspicious night, I stubbornly resisted the urge to change forms.

I can't really remember how long I was out there, walking aimlessly around the city, seeing with a kind of double-vision. Part of me saw what was there, and part of me remembered with strangely vivid clarity the glimpses Clockwork had given me ten years ago of the doomed city. Even as I had watched my older self—I guess I'll always think of him that way, no matter how old I get—even as I had watched him rain death and destruction down from the sky, I noticed that his Amity Park was a compact cluster of gleaming skyscrapers huddled tightly within the center of a ring of utter desolation. My Amity Park was sprawling and well-worn, brick and stone and concrete, vigorous, boisterous, noisy, messy—home.

I was born here, I've lived my whole life here, but there are parts of Amity Park I've never seen except from the air. I found myself in one of these areas tonight, a slightly seedy neighborhood of depression-era apartment buildings and Victorian row houses a few blocks away from the waterfront. Lost in thought, I strolled along the cracked and buckled sidewalk, past patchy postage-stamp lawns and tiny fenced gardens. Although it was close to midnight, sounds of life echoed through the streets: automobiles idling at a stoplight, a heavy dance beat booming from an open window, a baby's cry, a lovers' argument.

I was halfway down a nearly deserted block behind a dilapidated factory when a police cruiser floated down, drew alongside me and slowed to match my pace. I turned to let the officer know that I was not in need of assistance, then felt my skin grow cold when I saw it was Valerie. She pulled her car over to the curb and stopped; her passenger-side window opened and she leaned across the seat. "Get in," she said, in a voice that was simultaneously friendly and drop-dead intimidating. Over the last two years she had taken to police work like a fish takes to water.

As I slid into the passenger seat, I noticed the change in her appearance with a start. Was the universe actually conspiring to drive me insane on this particular night? For the last three years she had worn her hair in tight cornrows, gathered into a neat cascade down her back, but tonight the braids were gone. Her hair had been cropped close, subtly flat across the top. She must have noticed the astonished—horrified—look on my face, because she grinned and ran her hand across her tightly shorn 'do. "You like it?" she asked, her husky voice flirtatious. She meant nothing by that; it was just an old game between us. "I don't know what came over me, I just told the stylist to cut it all off."

"Uh. . . yeah, I guess. It's a good look for you. A pretty big change, though. It's. . . uh. . . going to take some getting used to." My mouth was blabbering on auto-pilot because I was once again seeing double: she was sitting there beside me in her crisp, blue uniform and at the same time she was hovering over me in her armor, threatening to kill me with an ecto-grenade launcher. I closed my eyes and tried to suppress my physical reaction to the hallucination: my heart racing, my fists clenched, a cold sweat drenching my clothes.

"Are you okay?" She laid a hand on my left arm, which made me jump and recoil as though she'd given me an electric shock. "Sam called me a couple of hours ago, told me you had gone off without your Thermos and you hadn't checked in. She asked me to keep an eye out for you."

I opened my eyes again and was relieved to see only my friend, her face filled with concern. Of course she looked exactly the way I remembered her from the nightmare vision of the future; we had aged together over the course of ten years to this moment. Without making a big deal about it, I had quietly taken steps to avoid growing to resemble that evil apparition. There's nothing I can do about my height, or my boyishly round face, but I try to avoid the sorts of exercise that might bulk up my chest and shoulders. I keep myself clean-shaven and my hair cut fairly short; I even make an effort to pitch my voice a little higher and softer than it sounds naturally. Valerie, on the other hand, had matured into the exact same woman I remembered: trim, striking, commanding and deadly.

She finished her cautious inspection of me and my fraying nerves and turned her attention to lifting her cruiser back into the travel lanes.

I found my voice. "Are you running personal errands for my wife, then?" Even though she and Sam had built a fragile peace long ago, I imagined that it would require more than the usual share of late-night anxiety to make Sam call Officer Gray for help.

She laughed. "I would have been looking out for you, anyway. I have a package for you." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. I took a look behind me and saw her Thermos on the back seat,

bulging and roiling with at least two captive ghosts. (This newest design from FentonWorks, a pouch of flexible Kevlar, lies flat when empty—much more comfortable to wear slung across the back—but grows fatter with each capture. And the more ghosts you stuff inside, the more they thrash around. Even though they no longer remotely resemble their vacuum flask namesake, we still call them Thermoses.)

"Anybody I know?"

"No, just a couple of critters this time. Lots of teeth and claws, no discernable intelligence. You'll get rid of 'em for me?"

"Sure. Why don't you drop me off?" We were idling at a red light, she could pull down in the next block.

She gave me a level gaze, then returned her attention to the floatway as the light turned green. She accelerated smoothly through the intersection and did not pull down. "It's late, Sam's worried about you, why don't I just take you home?"

Was she being overprotective? Hardly necessary, she knows what I am. But there was a touch of concern in her voice, for a guy who can fly but who had chosen instead to walk aimlessly around the city in the middle of the night. I wondered what Sam had told her.

Val exited the express floatway at Chestnut Street, then turned right on Russell. In this part of town there were only few cars in the air, graveyard shift workers for the most part. It was a lonely, silent time, and we rode together in companionable silence. After a few minutes we floated past the Nasty Burger, which was dark, deserted, peaceful.

She dropped down and pulled to a stop in front of FentonWorks. I unbuckled my seatbelt and reached into the back seat to retrieve her Thermos, which was wriggling its way toward the floor. "Stop that!" I said with a smile, giving the pouch a playful punch. The ghosts inside couldn't hear me, of course, but part of the drill was to discourage them from venturing into our world again.

As soon as I was on the sidewalk in front of FentonWorks she throttled up her cruiser and it lifted off the ground. She leaned over and called to me through the open window. "I'll swing by tomorrow afternoon to get that back from you, okay?"

"Sure. I'll see you then."

I started to walk away, but she called me back. "Hey, Danny!"

I turned around again. She was leaning across the seat, peering at me through the window, eyes filled with concern and sympathy. "Are you sure everything's okay?"

"Yeah. It's just. . . it was such a peaceful evening." I looked up to the sky, where the moon (last quarter) was just rising above the trees. "It's a good night to be alive."

"That's it? Just. . . happy to be alive?" She bit her lip, watching me as though I had just turned purple or grown a third eye. "There's nothing else?"

"Well. . ." I paused, trying to find the words. "I'm happy you're alive, too. And you know something? I like the short hair. It really suits you."

"Hmmph. Good night, Danny. Get some sleep. I'll see you tomorrow." With that, her vehicle shot back into the floatway and disappeared around the next corner.

ooooo0ooooo

Private to Zero Enigma: I appreciate your feedback and I'd love to take you up on your offer, but I don't do AIM. Could you contact me via the link in my profile? Thanks!


	4. The Box Ghost

My deepest thanks to my regular Beta Reader, Obi-Quiet, and my guest Beta Reader for this chapter, Zero Enigma.** Beware!**

**Chapter 4: The Box Ghost**

I was fishing around in my pocket for my keys when I heard a crashing sound coming from the general direction of the back yard. At the same moment, a wave of congealing condensation started to work its way up my windpipe. I groaned as I breathed a stream of icy mist into the night air, then slung Val's bulging Thermos across my back as I sprinted toward the back gate, transforming as soon as I was out of sight of the street. So much for my peaceful evening. "Sorry, guys," I muttered to the creatures thrashing around inside the Thermos, "but it looks like you're going to have some company."

I floated silently across the lawn, listening carefully to the chorus of groans, curses, bumps and clatters emanating from the shed. The closer I came, the more certain I was who I was going to find inside—and the less urgency I felt.

He was pulling old storage boxes off the top shelf in the back of the shed, dumping tools, electronic components and other flotsam and jetsam of Fenton family life on the floor and setting the empty containers to spinning through the air. Focused intently on his work, he didn't seem to hear me or sense my presence as I pulled up behind him and struck a casual but menacing pose, arms folded across my chest, spectral tail flicking slowly from side to side.

"Box. . . Box. . . Box. . . ." I sighed with infinite patience. This was an old, old dance between us. Bravado on his part, resigned irritation on mine. "What happened to our agreement?"

He spun around and raised his arms in threat. "**Beware!**"

I sighed. Talking with the Box Ghost was often like trying to carry on a conversation with an assertive toddler. "Yeah. 'Beware' back at you. I asked you a question, Box: What was our agreement?"

"**I am the—**"

"—the Box Ghost, right. I'm Danny Phantom; we've met. And we agreed that you can have the boxes, as long as they are. . . ?"

"**. . . empty! I am the master of all things cardboard and square and empty!**" His booming voice somehow managed to sound pompous and apologetic at the same time.

"Right. In exchange for which, I don't go kicking your sorry butt all over town, and I don't use this on you." I tugged on the strap that lay across my chest, letting one corner of Valerie's Thermos peek over my shoulder as a reminder. The ghosts inside were still squirming, making the pouch bounce merrily against my back. "So. . . do you care to explain what you're doing in my shed?"

"**There are no more empty boxes!**" he cried, and with a wave of his hand sent a half-dozen cartons flying through the air toward me. I quickly reached back and slapped my left hand against the wall, turning both it and myself intangible so they would sail through and fall harmlessly on the grass outside. At the same time I raised my right hand, cupping a small, pulsing sphere of ectoplasmic energy. I was fully prepared to fight him, if it came to that, but Box just sank dispiritedly to the floor and sat there miserably with his head in his hands. "**All my beautiful, empty boxes have been cut apart and torn into pieces and trapped in huge metal prisons!"**

Huge metal prisons? What in the world. . . ?

Of course, the city's new mandatory recycling program! My agreement with the Box Ghost allowed him take discarded boxes back to his lair in the Ghost Zone, but Sam's recently enacted recycling initiative required that all businesses in Amity Park recycle cardboard along with glass, metal, plastics and paper. In just the last week, dozens of oversize green dumpsters for broken-down corrugated cardboard boxes had been installed throughout the city. I could easily imagine Box searching all his usual haunts in vain for empty boxes—he probably trashed the shed just to get my attention the only way he knew how. He could have just asked!

I settled down on the floor beside him and laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. "It's a recycling program, Box. People are breaking down the boxes so they can be recycled. They're still boxes, they've just been. . . flattened."

"**But I am not the master of all things cardboard and flat!**" he wailed.

He was the very picture of despair. I couldn't bear to leave him like that, and I knew that he'd quickly revert to his old destructive habits if he couldn't secure a reliable supply of empty boxes. I could imagine the chaos in store for Amity Park if I couldn't get him refocused. An idea crossed my mind. "Wait here a minute, I'll be right back."

"**Will you bring more boxes?"**

"I'll bring something even better. Just. . . stay there, and don't touch anything!" I slipped through the wall and flew toward the house.

About seven years ago I finally realized that the Box Ghost hadn't been using the Fenton Portal at all; he had created his own private portal, as so many ghosts do, tearing a tiny bolt-hole in the fabric of reality after months of agonizing and exhausting effort. His little portal, located in a shadowed corner of the warehouse on the docks where I had first fought him, was more than fifty years old, a source of much pride of ownership.

Eventually I came to grudgingly admit that I had no right to prevent him from using it. So we struck our agreement: he would stick to exercising mastery over _empty_ boxes, and I would leave him alone. Oh, there had been a bit of backsliding from time to time, and I had cheerfully kicked his butt whenever he truly deserved it, but for the last two or three years he had been the very model of ghostly decorum. He had even been willing to provide me a nugget of information from time to time, in exchange for a roll of bubble wrap or a bag of plastic packing peanuts. Valerie had heartily approved: Danny Fenton, Private Eye had his own ghostly snitch.

I phased through the wall into my home office and dug around in my desk until I found a wide roll of strapping tape in the back of a drawer, underneath a pile of nine-by-twelve mailers and empty file folders. I also emptied a file-storage box, quickly broke it down and folded it flat, and headed back outside.

I found him out on the lawn, cradling one of the empty boxes he had thrown at me earlier. I quickly demonstrated how he could use the strapping tape to repair a flattened box, cutting off lengths of tape with a light application of ectoplasmic power. He watched me intently, fascinated, his eyes bright with excitement at the prospect of rescuing all the poor captive boxes from their huge metal prisons of do-o-o-o-om!

In a flash, comprehension kicked in and he snatched the roll of tape away from me and shot up into the air. That caught me off-guard—frankly, I didn't realize he could move that fast. With just one apologetic glance at the disaster spread out across the back yard, not to mention the mess on the floor of the shed, I set off in pursuit. Tracking him was simplicity itself: I just followed the flock of flattened cardboard boxes that were soon circling the air over the Nasty Burger.

I found him standing on top of a dumpster, tossing more flattened boxes up into the air to join their fellows. After a few minutes he settled down on the restaurant's roof to begin the work of restoring the boxes to their cubical perfection. Beaming with joy, he looked over at me and bellowed, "**I am the Box Ghost! I am the master of all things cardboard and in need of repair!**"

Seemed like a good idea to me. I settled down on the top of the restaurant's air-conditioning unit and just watched him work. I could see that he was going to require a steady supply of strapping tape—I made a mental note to stock up—and I wondered how Sam was going to explain the sudden drop-off in recycled cardboard to her boss.

Suddenly, without warning, the double-vision kicked in again. I was still watching the Box Ghost cheerfully celebrate the repair of his beloved boxes, but I was also seeing the Box Ghost of my nightmare: Taller, stronger, more menacing, a deep, rasping whisper echoing in my ear. "_Beware. . . ._" And I couldn't escape the knowledge that _I_ was to blame for it. For all of it. For Johnny 13's wheelchair, for Ember's ruined voice, for Box's amputated right arm. What I had never been able to figure out was how my evil future self had managed to cause such a profound change in Box's personality. How could that menacing specter and this cheerful, childlike ghost be one and the same?

I shook my head sharply to dispel the illusion. There was only Box, my old adversary and recent associate, glancing up at me, grinning with unbridled pride. "**I will have so many beautiful boxes to take home to my lair!**" he bellowed.

Something clicked.

His lair. His home.

Home. My beautiful Sam, waiting for me, and our child to be. . . and. . . and his. . . .

"Box?"

"**What do you want of me?**"

"Can I ask you a. . . a personal question?"

I think he sensed something in the way I asked, perhaps in the way I spoke to him—as a peer instead of as a simpleton. I had asked his _permission_. Apparently intrigued, he let the cloud of repaired boxes settle down onto the roof and floated over to sit beside me on the air conditioner. He answered with almost gracious dignity: **"Yes! You may ask me a personal question!**"

I couldn't think of any way to phrase it except bluntly. "Do you have a daughter?"

He paused for a moment, eying me warily. ** "Yes. I have a daughter. She's a sweet little ghost, she's only two. . . ."**

"Only two?" That was a shock. Apparently my encounter with Box Lunch was still many years in her future, even as it was ten years in my past. And we'd fought more than a day _before_ the C.A.T., so it seemed unlikely that our fight had been wiped out when Clockwork reset time. I felt a moment of sharp resentment toward the ghost of time and his manipulative ways. That was just his style: bring in an innocent bystander and put her in a situation where she didn't stand a chance, just to set the desired course of events in motion. I sometimes think he enjoys his view of the "parade" a little too much. Why did he have to go and use Box Lunch as cannon fodder in the battle for my soul?

Two years old. I tried to imagine what a two-year-old ghost would be like. Never mind that—how about a two-year-old ghost throwing a tantrum? With a feeling of dread I tried to imagine Sam attempting to discipline a two-year-old human child with ghost powers. Would it have to fall to me to be the family disciplinarian? Would we have to turn to the Box Ghost and the Lunch Lady for parenting advice? Where in the world would we ever be able to find a baby-sitter?

"I bet she's a handful," I ventured.

Without warning, something primal awoke in the Box Ghost. He had been staring at me with uncertainty and caution, but then roared protectively, **"How do you know that? Who told you about her? She has not ventured into this plane, she has done nothing to you! You will never capture her in your terrible, formless trap!" **

I suddenly realized I wasn't just talking to a silly ghost with a weird obsession for boxes. I was talking to a _father, _a father who was very protective about his little girl. And I couldn't very well promise him I'd never harm her. _I already had_! The explosive power of one packet of Nasty Sauce wasn't enough to cause a ghost any permanent damage, but it must have hurt. I'd meant it to hurt. And I couldn't blame this one on my "jerky older self," as Sam called him; I had done that as a fourteen-year-old with my humanity still intact.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Take it easy, Box." Cautiously, I reached out and patted the agitated ghost on the shoulder. "I don't have any quarrel with Box Lunch. I wish you, and your whole family all the best. I just wondered, that's all. My wife and I are going to have our first child soon, and. . . well, I just wondered."

"**Your. . . your _wife_?**" That caught him off-guard. "**You have a _wife_? ** **Oh no, not that spooky girl with the black hair and the attitude!"**

"Um. . . yeah?" Seriously: how do you answer a question like that? I hoped Sam would never hear about it, although for all I know she might take Box's description of her as a compliment.

He wrinkled his nose in disgust. **"Ew!"**

"Hey! That was uncalled for."

"**But. . . she is a human!**"

I had to work very hard to not laugh at him. "Yeah? Uh. . . News Flash for you: so am I!" Well, technically. . . most of the time.

"**Well, both of you should leave me and my daughter alo-o-o-one!**" He shot into the sky and flew off in the direction of his portal on the wharf, a comet-tail of cardboard boxes trailing behind him.

As I watched him vanish in the distance, I wondered how I was going to explain things to Box (and the Lunch Lady) on that day in the future when their little girl would suddenly appear, dazed, bruised and covered in superheated Nasty Sauce.

Belatedly, I realized that Clockwork's time reset might have changed things after all; the Box Lunch I remembered was the daughter of a very different Box Ghost. Perhaps her own existence had been changed by the same alteration in the time stream that had made a mild-mannered father-to-be out of me.

Just thinking about it made my head hurt. I headed home.


	5. Clockwork

Allow me a moment to express my very deep gratitude to Obi-Quiet, who has been the most patient and insightful of betas for this chapter.

**Chapter 5: Clockwork**

_You don't get it, do you? I'm still here. I still exist! That means you still turn into me."_

I may have lost track of the passage of time, but I hadn't forgotten a single moment of that nightmare. Worse, when I spoke those words out loud it was that same deep, gravelly voice I heard. My own voice.

Had I finally proven him wrong?

Valerie's Thermos was squirming its way toward the edge of my parents' workbench, but I paid it no attention. I was occupied examining my face in the mirror over the sink in the darkened lab: round and wide-eyed, with a undersized nose and oversized mouth; thick, white hair in serious need of a trim, with a faint green cast reflected from the light of my eyes. Then the double-vision kicked in again; my hair burst into blue-white flames, my eyes glinted dark red and my mouth twisted into a cruel smirk.

Several hours earlier, at the Nasty Burger, Sam had asked me how I could have forgotten what happened ten years ago. It disturbed me that she could believe for one moment that I had somehow managed to erase those memories. Of course I couldn't forget! I just didn't bother keeping track of the date, as though the passage of each successive April twenty-fourth was some sort of accomplishment. No, I had observed the natural milestones of my life: each successive growth spurt, my gradually deepening voice, not to mention my ever expanding powers. Each and every time I caught myself using those powers for convenience, or satisfaction, or revenge—those were the moments to stop and remember, to reflect, to renew my promise. _I will never turn into him. Never. _

I squeezed my eyes shut, then reopened them, and the hallucination was gone. I saw myself, boyish smile, electric-green eyes, just the same, normal half-ghost I'd been for ten years.

I wanted answers. I _needed_ answers. And I knew there was only one place to find answers.

I grabbed the Thermos and with a longing, apologetic glance up in the direction of our bedroom, where I hoped Sam was fast asleep and not lying awake wondering where I had gone and why I hadn't come home yet, plunged through the swirling green vortex into the Ghost Zone. Once through, I used a miniature remote-control (adapted by my dad from a standard garage-door opener) to shut the Portal doors behind me. Then I released Val's captured critters, gave each of them an ecto-blast parting gift to speed them on their way, took a moment to orient myself and flew off into the void.

That first year, Sam, Tucker and I had attempted a ludicrously ambitious project of mapping the Ghost Zone. We'd started with a crude sketch map of the region within a half-hour's flight in the Specter Speeder, but Tuck eventually developed a sophisticated three-dimensional plotting system, assigning each island, structure and door a unique set of three coordinates—roughly equivalent to longitude, latitude and altitude. But as we ventured farther and farther away from 0º 0º 0º (the Fenton Portal) Tucker began to notice significant anomalies, as distances between known points were not matching up properly with his calculations.

He finally shut himself up in his room for a long weekend and emerged on Monday afternoon to announce that space in the Ghost Zone does not obey the rules of either Euclidean or non-Euclidean geometry. He added that he would probably have to get an advanced degree in theoretical mathematics to make any sense of it. The funny thing is, _I_ have no trouble at all finding my way around in here—I guess that's because I'm a ghost, and Tucker isn't. Jazz says it's probably just as well that I never made as far as geometry in school, or my brain might have exploded.

In any case, I was following a slightly roundabout course toward Clockwork's Tower, maintaining a respectful distance from areas patrolled by Walker and his minions, when I heard a plaintive whine behind me.

"Will you be my friend?"

I slowed my progress, turned around and drifted a little while Klemper caught up with me. In the course of ten years he hadn't changed a bit: baggy pink-striped pajamas, snaggle-tooth smile, that vacuous expression of desperate loneliness. His bulging, mismatched eyes pleaded with me as he asked again, "Will you _please_ be my friend?"

I smiled reassuringly. "Of course I'll be your friend. How's it going, Klemper?"

He didn't answer, but his face beamed with happiness and he demonstrated his joy with a barrage of golf ball-sized hailstones; I went intangible to let them pass harmlessly into the void, then fired back with a snowball the size of a watermelon. He didn't even try to defend himself, but just giggled gleefully as my missile exploded harmlessly against his chest. Klemper may have the IQ of a chicken salad sandwich, but cryokinesis is an extremely rare power among ghosts; we ice-makers have to stick together. The games I play with him are actually very useful training sessions for me. Besides which, he's immensely strong, and a guy can never have too many friends in the Ghost Zone.

And I do have friends in the Ghost Zone. More importantly, I have enemies with whom I have managed to build a fairly stable peace. For the most part they avoid the Fenton Portal and leave Amity Park alone; in return, I give them wide berth in the Ghost Zone and let them be. If they manage to find some way into my world other than the Fenton Portal. . . well, that's just the way things are. Ghosts have haunted the living since time immemorial, and they will continue do so long after I'm gone. All I can do is control access to the great big hole my parents had cut through the barrier between worlds and try to keep a lid on the worst threats.

Klemper tagged along with me until I was within sight of Clockwork's Tower, but would not come any farther. The ghost of time cultivates the reputation of being somewhat unapproachable, and Klemper clearly had no desire to draw his attention. I called out a quick good-bye and then redoubled my pace.

Although Clockwork is not an enemy, I can't exactly call him a friend, either. He's one of the few authoritarian figures in the relatively lawless Ghost Zone (Walker is another) and he is in no way impressed with or intimidated by me. He's not exactly a colleague and he's certainly not a peer. I owe him my life and I'll never stop being grateful to him for saving my family and friends, but I do wish it was possible to engage him in a serious conversation without ending up sounding naïve and foolish.

So I guess I should have known better than to come here looking for simple answers to straightforward questions. I had hoped for enlightenment, or at least reassurance, but instead I ran headlong into a stonewall.

ooooo0ooooo

"Time just doesn't work that way, Daniel. The fate of the Box Ghost—of all the denizens of the Ghost Zone—was immeasurably altered by your victory against your alternate self." Clockwork was in his child form, with a buck-tooth pout that makes it hard to read his expression. "But what has happened in your past will have already happened in Box Lunch's future. All has been, and will be, exactly as it should be."

My headache resurfaced as I tried to wrap my brain around his tangled verb tenses. I sighed, discouraged, and forced myself to look again into Clockwork's window on the past, where my fourteen-year-old self was busy battling a little girl ghost only half his size. Admittedly, she was not a bad little fighter, I thought, as I watched her knock me down through the roof of the Nasty Burger. Where, I knew, I would quickly come up with a clever, effective, painful counter-weapon to use against a food-summoning mattermorph.

"Given that she was clearly younger than you, and that she told you from the start that she was the daughter of two of the least powerful ghosts you've ever fought, I'll grant you that your reaction was somewhat less than chivalrous. But surely you are not suggesting that I send you back in time, just so you can undo an event you find inconvenient?"

He _had_ let me do that, once. _Once_. "Of course not! If I don't fight with Box Lunch then there's no explosion; no explosion means no answers; no answers means no cheating." I shook my head wearily. "I understand that I had to be tested, and I had to _fail_ in order to prevent that future from coming to pass."

"Ah. So you_ were_ paying attention. Good." Shifting to his adult form, he waved his staff and the image of the first Nasty Burger explosion froze at the exact moment I fell through Mr. Lancer's briefcase. "So tell me, Daniel, what exactly would you have me do?"

"All I'm asking is that you give me some. . . I don't know, some clue as to when my fight with Box Lunch happens from her end of the time stream. I mean, if she's only two years old now, it's still got to be five or six years in my future, right?"

"And what purpose would knowing that serve?"

"Well, for one thing I could move my family to Timbuktu a week or two beforehand, how about that?"

"Daniel. . . ." His voice was patient, weary, perhaps just a little disappointed.

"No. Of course not." I should have known better than to even ask. Clockwork may know everything, but he's very stubborn about sharing information. "I just wanted to be prepared, that's all."

He shifted again, this time to his ancient form. Stooped and shriveled, he exuded an even greater air of serene condescension. "You have successfully fought both the Box Ghost and the Lunch Lady before. Surely it would be no great difficulty to fight them again."

"But I don't _want_ to fight them! They're not my enemies!" I had worked so hard to end that stupid cycle of fight and capture, release and return, fight and capture, again and again and again. We had a truce, a reasonable relationship that occasionally teetered on the edge of respect, and I couldn't allow that delicate balance to be shattered.

"At the risk of sounding meddlesome—"

"Heaven forbid," I muttered. Distracted by the thoughts of an endless feud, I couldn't help myself; the sarcasm just flowed naturally.

"_At the risk of sounding meddlesome_," he repeated, with just a touch of irritation, "I suggest that you inform both of the child's parents of your youthful transgression long before they find out about it from her."

"Oh, so it's okay for _them _to know what's going to happen in the future, but not for me?"

"They will have learned it from you, which means they will know no more than you know. All these events will come to pass, but not in a way that either you or they can anticipate or prevent. Everything will happen exactly the way it is supposed to happen—and you will have made a sincere effort to atone for what you have already done." He pointed with his staff to the scene from the past, which had shifted to the moment I discovered the sealed packet of test answers stuck to my back. "That's all anyone can do—and you already know that. So I don't think you've been entirely honest about your reason for coming here tonight."

He was right. I had broached the subject of Box Lunch in an attempt to avoid the real issue. I tore my eyes away from the image of the past and took a deep breath. "My wife, my sister and my best friend threw me an anniversary party tonight."

"I know. But then, I know—"

"—know everything. Right. Do you have any idea how annoying that is?"

"Of course I do, Daniel; don't be impertinent. You are operating under a misapprehension, however. They did not throw the party for you; it has been their practice to gather every year on this date to commemorate the fact that they did not die."

"They do?" That caught me off-guard. Suddenly I felt isolated, deprived, left out. Ten years of observances and they never even bothered to tell me. "Why. . . ?"

"Because it was the opinion of your sister, and not without good reason, that you might not appreciate being reminded of those events. After all, what didn't happen to you is very different from what didn't happen to them. It is instructive to remember that their memory of those events does not match yours. They know that you managed to defeat yourself before the explosion that would have killed them, but you are the only one who saw it not happen."

"'Saw it. . . _not_ happen'? But it _did_ happen. You were there, you saved them, but it all _happened_. The Nasty Burger blew up."

"No, it didn't, you only remember it that way. That explosion is just a series of synapses in your brain that misfire every now and then and make you remember something that never happened."

"Are you saying that my memory is false? I didn't invent that memory, I was _there_." That series of synapses fired, and suddenly I was there again, exhausted and feeble, falling flat on my face on the street, then temporarily blinded by the flash, deafened and tossed through the air by the shockwave. Had Clockwork not intervened, I would probably have been horribly burned and scarred by the flying debris. Had Clockwork not intervened, I also would have been utterly alone. But time stopped. . . .

"The Thermos! That's real, that's no faulty memory. You still have the Thermos with him inside." I floated over to the shelf at the rear of the chamber, where my old Thermos had sat gathering dust for ten years. "He is still in there, isn't he? I mean, after ten years he'd have to be totally insane—way more insane than he was to start with. What if he escapes? Or maybe he's gradually fading away, or he already has faded away, or he might have just popped out of existence at the exact moment he jumped backwards in time—because he never came back to_ this_ time. And that was yesterday afternoon, right?" I had to stop babbling and catch my breath.

"Yesterday? What made you think it was yesterday? The evil creature known as Phantom will have departed from the time stream at ten-fifteen am local time on June tenth, 2016."

"June tenth? But that's. . . what, six weeks from now? How the heck did that happen?"

Clockwork shook his head wearily. "'Ten years.' Your simple mind hears 'ten years' and naturally you just jump to the conclusion that it means precisely three thousand, six hundred and fifty-two days. What in the world would make you think that he would destroy Amity Park exactly ten years to the day after cheating on the C.A.T.?"

"Six more weeks! So. . . it's not over. Not yet." I felt somehow betrayed. He was right; it was silly to think that the 'anniversary' would work both ways, but I had spent the evening believing— "Wait a minute. Does that mean he's still out there?"

"Who's still out there?" Clockwork shifted to his middle form, the better to look disgusted at my simple-mindedness. "Out _where_? He has not been 'out' anywhere since you captured him in that Thermos at five-eleven pm on April twenty-fourth, 2006. How can he be 'out there' if he never existed?"

"Never existed? Of course he existed! If he didn't exist, who did this?" I picked up the Thermos gingerly, with both hands. Its once-smooth, shiny surface was now a moonscape of dings and dents where the ghost had pounded it from the inside. Among the countless marks I could just make out the miniature image of his face (_my_ face except for the fangs) where he had apparently head-banged the inner surface of the trap early in his imprisonment. All of this I had seen before, of course, but I couldn't tell whether any of the dents were recent. Today the Thermos was silent, inert, with no sign of life from its maybe, maybe-not captive.

"He was in here. I captured him, and he was in here. But is he in here now? Is he still. . . ?" I found myself straining to find the right words, wondering why I couldn't manage to master all those fancy verb tenses that Clockwork uses so easily. "Why don't you understand? I need to know!"

"You do not _need_ to know anything. And I am not some kind of ghostly wikipedia, so kindly refrain from treating me as such. If and when I share information with you, it is for purposes that are far beyond your limited understanding."

Frustration boiled over. "I think I'm entitled. After all, that's me in there! Maybe it's the me that would have been if things worked out differently, the me that absolutely deserved to be Thermosed for all eternity, but it's still _me,_ and that means I'm entitled to know!"

Clockwork wrested the Thermos away from me and returned it to the shelf. "You are not entitled to anything, Daniel. The guardianship falls to me, not to you. It is none of your concern, and I suggest that you find a way to put it out of your mind and get on with the rest of your life."

"No. No, I can't! I. . . can't live with that kind of uncertainty."

"You can't live with uncertainty?" He stared at me for a moment, as if I had grown a third eye or sprouted wings. It was a bit uncomfortable, enduring his stare**. "**Tell me, Daniel: do I understand correctly that your unborn child is both a boy and a girl?"

"What? That's not— That's not the same thing at all.That's just a game Sam and I play, a way of. . . I don't know, a way of keeping an open mind. I can imagine he's a boy, or she's a girl, and I love him—her—either way. And a little less than three months from now, we'll know for sure."

"And from that happy moment forward there'll be no more uncertainty?" The corner of his mouth twitched, and I knew he was leading headlong me into a trap. "Tell me this, then: is your child fully human, or half-ghost? And when will you know? And how will you know when you know?"

I had no answer for that.

"You better get used to living with uncertainty, because that's what parenthood _is_. Is he healthy? When will she start talking? Why does he have so much trouble making friends? Where is she, and why hasn't she come home yet?" He floated in close, peering into my electric-green eyes. "Do you honestly think your own parents don't live with raw, aching uncertainty every single day of their lives?"

My perspective wheeled around on its axis, and suddenly I was looking at myself from the outside. _Why is he always out so late at night? Why is he exhausted all the time? Why are his grades falling? Why is he so tense, so secretive, so nervous, so distant? _

_Why won't he confide in us? _

Eventually I did confide in them, and I knew that they both grieved and resented the years that I had kept them in ignorance. Even so, there were details, thousands of wounds and torments and miseries that they would never know. For one, they would never know how close to death they came exactly ten years ago tonight.

And we were back to that. Back to that central, imperative, unrelenting question. Frustrated, drained, and unwilling to let go, I asked again. "Please, just tell me. . . is there anything inside there?"

"Nothing!" he snapped. "Everything. Schroedinger's Cat."

"Schroedinger's. . . what?"

"Ask your mother. She'll explain it to you." He raised his staff, and in the wink of an eye. . .

. . . I was home.


	6. Mom

As always, I am deeply grateful to Obi-Quiet for the beta advice. Special guest-beta gratitude goes to KDH for checking my physics.

**Chapter 6: Mom**

I was home.

Specifically, I was standing at the top of the kitchen stairs, as though I had just walked up from the lab. From the early morning light that was filtering in from the windows in the living room, I knew that I had been up all night. Well, it wasn't the first time, and it won't be the last. Mom was standing at the kitchen counter, pouring a cup of coffee from a fresh pot.

Something startled her—my sudden, silent arrival, probably—and she splashed some of her coffee on the floor. "Oh, Danny, I wish you wouldn't sneak up on me like that! I didn't hear you come in."

"Sorry, Mom. I should have said something. What time is it, anyway?" I grabbed a couple of paper napkins from the table and mopped up the spill while Mom got another mug down from the shelf and poured some coffee for me.

"About a quarter to six. I know I'm here awfully early, but I had one of those 'Eureka!' moments in the middle of the night and I couldn't wait to get started. Did you have good hunting last night? Sam was worried about you."

"Uh. . . ." I hesitated, momentarily disoriented. I hadn't been hunting last night, had I? She handed the mug to me and as I accepted it in my gloved hands I belatedly realized that I was still in ghost form, with an empty Thermos strapped to my back. I quickly transformed and tossed the Thermos onto the table. "Uh, no. This was Val's capture, I just released them for her."

"Oh, that's nice. How's Valerie doing these days?"

I had to remind myself that this was not meant to be a loaded question. Neither Mom nor Dad had any idea of the significance of the date, even if everybody else was wallowing in it. How is Valerie doing? She's alive, that's how she's doing, and so is everybody else. The Nasty Burger is still standing; nobody died.

"Val's fine, I'll let her know you asked." _You didn't die, either._

She set a bakery box full of blueberry muffins on the table. We sat and broke our fast in companionable silence for a few minutes, just enjoying the rich flavors and blessed pre-dawn quiet. But the question that had been creeping around in the back of my head finally worked its way to the surface.

"Mom?"

"Mmm?"

"Have you ever heard of a cat called Schroeder?"

She finished chewing and took a sip of her coffee. "A cat called—"

"Somebody told me I should ask you about Schroeder the Cat." Did it really sound so ridiculous?

"Schroeder. . . oh! Schroedinger's Cat!" She stifled a laugh, although I couldn't see what was so amusing. Had Clockwork put one over on me? "'Schroedinger' was the name of the scientist, Sweetie, not the name of the cat."

"Ah—I guess I misunderstood. Schroedinger, the _scientist,_ then. What was the cat's name?"

"The cat's name? Oh, silly, the cat didn't have a name!" That sent her over the edge. She giggled like a little girl, in that way that she has that makes people forget that she can inflict serious mayhem either with weapons or her own bare hands. (Their mistake.) "Remind me: how much physics did you take in college?"

"Let me think. . ." Throwing dignity to the winds I went along with the joke, ticking off the items on my fingers. "There was. . . and then my sophomore year. . . and don't forget. . . add it all together and I guess that would be. . . none. Zero. Zip. Nada."

"Ri-i-ight. Let's see, then. Where to start?" She took another bite of her muffin while she figured out how to explain 'Schroedinger's Cat' to her science-challenged offspring. "In 1935, Erwin Schroedinger proposed a thought experiment to illustrate the indeterminate nature of sub-atomic particles."

". . . and he had a cat."

"Actually, I don't know whether he ever had a cat. I suppose it's entirely possible that he didn't like cats very much at all."

She was losing me, fast. "Schroedinger's Cat wasn't a cat?"

"No, 'Schroedinger's Cat' was the name of the thought experiment. He said, if you put a cat inside a sealed container with a vial of poison gas and a triggering device—"

"Whoa! Wait a minute: he _killed_ the cat?" That was unexpected. I'm glad Sam wasn't in the room, or we might have a riot on our hands. Come to think of it, I wasn't too thrilled with it, either.

"I told you, there wasn't any cat! A thought experiment is one you don't actually do, you just think about it. No cats were harmed, I promise. Now do you want me to explain this, or not?"

"Sorry. Go ahead."

"All right, then. In Schroedinger's thought experiment, one would _contemplate_ sealing a cat inside a container with a vial of poison gas and a triggering device. The triggering device would be operated by a small amount of radioactive material with a half-life of one hour." She paused and figured out from my expression that I wasn't keeping up with her. "That means that, at the end of one hour, there would be a fifty-fifty chance that the triggering device would have broken the vial and released the poison."

"This sounds awfully complicated."

"Well, that's pretty much all there was to it. The question is, after one hour, is the cat alive or dead? You can't find out unless you open the container, which would invalidate the experiment. So you express the cat's condition as being both alive and dead at the same time."

There was something about that odd turn of phrase that reminded me of Clockwork asking whether my unborn child was both a boy and a girl. But the bizarre, inhumane setup of the thought experiment was making my head swim. "Why would opening the container invalidate the experiment? And for that matter, why not put a window in the container, so you could see the cat?"

"There _was_ no container. _There was no cat!_" She laughed again, but thinly; I think I was starting to get on her nerves. _ " _Honey, none of this has anything to do with cats. It's just an illustration. . . like if I ask you how a case is going and you answer, 'I struck out,' you're not really talking about baseball. Don't you see?"

"It's like a. . . whatchamacallit, a metaphor."

"Exactly. Like a scientific metaphor. Schroedinger was just using the story of an imaginary cat in an imaginary container to illustrate one of the principles of quantum theory."

"Which is. . . ? Or should I just stop while I'm hopelessly lost?"

"To put it as simply as I can manage: You can't determine the quantum state of an individual particle unless you isolate the particle and look at it, and if you do that, you change its quantum state. 'The act of observing affects the observed.' Does that make sense?"

It did—though probably not in the sense old Schroedinger intended. My blood ran cold as I unwound the chain of logic and reached a far simpler answer: "If you never open the container and look inside, you'll never know whether the cat is alive or dead."

She sighed. "Yes. Yes, I suppose that's one way of looking at it. Unless you open the container, you have to assume that either answer is possible, and neither answer is certain."

_Is there anything_ _left inside there? _

_Nothing. _

_Everything. _

I got up, circled the table and gave my mother a kiss on the cheek. "Thanks, Mom. It does make sense to me now. And if you'll excuse me, I'd better go make peace with Sam."


	7. Epilogue: Sam

**Author's Notes:**

My apologies to all who suffered headaches after reading chapter six. (The most common response I received in the reviews was "now my head hurts.") I'm sending virtual aspirin to all.

I first encountered 'Schroedinger's Cat' in a poem by know-it-all columnist Cecil Adams. His column, _The Straight Dope,_ appears in a number of alternative newspapers, including _The City Paper_ in Washington, DC. If you're curious, you can find a link to his epic poem about ol' Schroedinger on my website: www. geocities. com/ bluemoonalto (delete the spaces).

I want to thank everyone who took the time to post comments and reviews. I have thanked most of you privately, but there were a couple of unsigned reviews and if I missed anybody, I apologize. I do deeply appreciate feedback, as writing can be a very lonely activity.

This is the end of the line, the short epilogue to the story. If you find that your questions have not been sufficiently answered, then I have done my job. That's exactly the situation that our Danny finds himself in: he now has to learn to live with the uncertainty.

A very merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year to all!

**Epilogue: Sam**

I paused in the doorway of our room just to watch Sam sleep. She was curled up on her side in the middle of the bed, clutching my pillow to her chest. Longing to be fast asleep myself, I wondered whether it would be possible to maneuver into bed without waking her—or whether I should even try, as Sam is definitely not a morning person and I didn't want to disturb her last few minutes of rest before she had to get up and get ready for work. I racked my brain trying to remember whether I had any pressing morning appointments to keep me from hibernating until noon, only to remember after several frustrating minutes that today was Saturday and I could stay in bed as long as I wanted to.

_And so could Sam._ I smiled.

I sat gingerly on the edge of the bed and started to pull a corner of the covers back, hoping not to disturb her, but she wasn't as deeply asleep as I had thought. Her breath caught, and she sighed as she reached out to poke me in the back. "Is that really you? Or am I dreaming again?"

"I'm the genuine article," I whispered. Sam obligingly scootched back to make some room for me, but not too far. Surrendering my pillow, she draped an arm over me and held me close.

"Standard question," she murmured in my ear.

I couldn't answer right away, as I was yawning so hard I thought my face just might break in half. How had I managed to stay awake so long? The spasm finally passed, and I answered, "I'm fine. I didn't mean to be out all night, honest. And. . . I'm really sorry for bailing out on you guys last night."

"We didn't mean to upset you, honey. That's the last thing any of us wanted to do."

I was astonished. Was _she _apologizing? I was the one who'd vanished without so much as an 'excuse me,' who left her to fret while I wandered around all night trying to get my head on straight, looking for answers that didn't exist for questions that were better left unasked.

She whispered, almost hesitantly, "You're not angry, are you?"

"Of course I'm not—I just wasn't prepared to deal with it, I guess. You've done this before, haven't you? Just the three of you?"

"Every year," she said, "the weekend closest to April twenty-fourth. The last few, we just talked on the phone. But this anniversary was special, and we couldn't let it pass without a little ceremony." She nuzzled my cheek, then breathed in my ear: "You did it, Danny, don't you see? You beat him. He never existed."

_June tenth_, I thought, but I kept that thought to myself. Aloud I asked, "How in the world did you manage to get Jazz and Tucker home without me knowing?"

"You've been busy. . . it's not like we deliberately tried to keep you in the dark, but I did think it would be a nice surprise. We never meant to—_ahh_!" She gasped, a sound that was more startled than distressed. I tensed, instantly alert, but she quickly grinned reassurance and pulled my hand over to rest on her stomach. "Relax, hero. It's just your daughter practicing her Tai-Bo."

"That's my boy." I switched her gender with the ease of long practice. Beneath my hand I could feel the impact of tiny feet as he squirmed and kicked. He will be strong, I thought; she will be feisty. For now, that was all the answer I needed.

And I slept.


End file.
